Readers' comments

Chinese goverment should ,at least , keep literature out of its authority. One should respect the personal opinions of an individual rather than putting restriction on freedom of Speech. Its such a disgraceful act by china, which sets to overtake USA in near future as next superpower, to inhibits one,s thought about the political and social system in china.
I was also surprised to know britain authority succumbing to pressure from chinese officials

Look, folks, a book fair is like an open house, in the hope of fetching good price. Some window dressing is to be expected, and competitors poking newly painted wall is also a fair game. But inviting the exiled authors (most are self-exiled to begin with)? It's like taking back the trash thrown out and pile in the kitchen? you got to be kidding. After all, ain't a book fair supposed to show case what people in China are reading? If a book is banned in China, shouldn't that be reflected truthfully in the book fair?

I personally would recommend including Tombstone (杨继绳) by the Xinhua journalist Yang Jisheng, wherein Chinese readers can learn how the Communist Party caused the deaths of 36 million people through famine - almost as many as Hitler and Stalin combined managed during the Second World War. This will also teach them something about the real purposes of China's censorship system - to prevent the population from learning about the Communist Party's crimes.

Not on London Book Fair, but on April22, 2012, Washington Post: a David Ignatius wrote: “China’s Corrupt Secrets”

In it, it says:
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“…The United States could have gone public with scandal and made trouble for Chinese, big time. Instead, the State Department (backed by White House) decided to treat it as internal political matter involving a corrupt local police chief. Some Republican legislators are complaining that Washington spurned a potential defector, but that’s silly, Using such a local police chief to play political games would have been a mistake, and administration officials made the right call.”
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What is this guy talking about? Blackmailing over media? Does he have any sense of journalistic ethical code of conduct?

If indeed the US State Department knows something there (Bo Xilai case), it should let it all hang out to the American public and quit “helping” China. China does not engage such dirty politics of censorship, western style IMO.

There was a severe case of corruption in high place in China. It happened, and it is under investigation and being dealt with. Haven’t high officials in Western government committed crimes before?

Once investigation is done, it will be officially announced accordingly by the government. In the mean time, I think China needs no such "help" from the West (the US) to "hide" details or "secrets" of the scandal. The West can guess all sorts of "secrets" of the scandal it wants, but why not just let them all out in open?

But the above article, although stupid and immoral IMO, nonetheless serves to illustrate the prevailing mode of bashing in the West, out of unfounded and short sighted phobia of China's peaceful rise.

"There was a severe case of corruption in high place in China. It happened, and it is under investigation and being dealt with. Haven’t high officials in Western government committed crimes before?

Once investigation is done, it will be officially announced accordingly by the government"

So corruption in the Communist Party will be investigated, secretly, by the Communist Party and its verdict will be announced, in due course, with no openness or transparency or any possibility of review by anybody else - as with the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, etc. All is fine - as long as you have blind faith and trust in the wisdom of the Communist Party and its ability to police itself without any conflict of interest.

This is the difference with crimes committed by high officials in Western governments. No matter how many times it's explained to you, you just can't see the difference, can you. Or pretend not to.

...but is blind faith and trust in CCP necessarily worse than blind faith and trust in Chinese people? Empirical evidence since WWI seems to say blind faith and trust in the later led to worse results.

How so? By all international surveys, the richest and least corrupt countries in the world are all democracies. China's economy has done well in the past 30 years, but average per-capita incomes are still a fraction of those in North America, Western Europe and Japan. A lot of China's progress since 1979 has been making up for ground lost during the unprecedented destruction of the CCP's first 30 years in power.

What keeps corruption under control is the bright light of free information, democratic processes of accountability and rule of law. Notable failures to clean up corruption in the West typically happen when a body (such as the police, for example) is responsible for investigating itself. It cannot be done. There is a basic conflict of interest. This fundamental problem was recognised three centuries ago with the formulation by the French political philosopher Montesqieu of the doctrine of the separation of powers, which is a central pillar of all Western political systems.

People sometimes call for China to set up an independent anti-corruption body like Hong Kong's ICAC. Sometimes even naiive CCP supporters join in these calls. They do not understand that this will never happen under Communist rule. The CCP can never go there. Once you give another body power to hold the CCP to account, you have implicitly accepted the separation of powers and there is no knowing where it could lead. The whole system could unravel.

So China's anti-corruption campaigns will remain window-dressing excercises for show only. The CCP makes an example of the occasional corrupt official but always calls a halt before the campaign goes too far, lest it reveal the rot at the heart of the system and call the legitimacy of the party's rule into question.

Sorry but your logic is flawed to the core. I just have time to point out the fallacy of your first sentence: "all richest and least corrupted countries are democracies" Yes, but certainly not all democracies are richest and least corrupted! don't you understand cause and effect relationship?

“So corruption in the Communist Party will be investigated, secretly, by the Communist Party and its verdict will be announced, in due course, with no openness or transparency or any possibility of review by anybody else”
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Your post, I am sorry, shows you have absolutely no idea about American legal system and how it works. And you have absolutely no knowledge about Chinese legal system. (Party disciplinary and state prosecution are two different things for one thing)

Thanks to “Houshu”’s polite words to you which should have straighten you out somewhat about Western and Chinese domains of jurisprudence, I should hope.

Suffice to say both legal systems (Western and Chinese) looked good on paper, but in practice neither is perfect and I’d be very, very careful to judge which one is better than the other. Even though the measure of law breaking is the same, it really depends on who was involved, what was involved and when was involved.

There is no “I am holier than thou” between West and China systems and that’s for sure. Stop cheating yourself.

I am no expert in law, but based on what I know, let me just cite an example:

Ever heard of RICO in America? (That stands for Racketter Influenced and Corrupt Organization btw). It’s a US law to deal with underground mafia but was successfully used to nail perpetrators of inside information trading of stocks and securities before Madoff’s time. If I throw in names like Boesky or Milken may be you can wiki or google for more details for you.

The short of the long story is that when US district attorney prosecutes these guys, practically every investigation was conducted in utmost secret manner so that plead-bargaining (give and take in specific crimes to be charged) and turning a guy to state witness can be sufficiently established to convict the lead criminals. Even grand jury is sometimes done in secret sessions.

When incriminating evidence was sufficiently and mostly secretly gathered that way, it is presented to the court for try. Neither the US nor China conducts secret court trial albeit court proceeding itself can be made secret and that presiding judge may also issue gag order to keep people from talking case outside the court.

All that have nothing to do with your “freedom”/ "oppression" or "openness"/ "transparency", but are internationally accepted legal means and procedures. So your bashing was ill conceived and poorly devised.

What an irrelevant ramble. Houshu wrote nothing about legal systems. You yourself string together a few disconnected anecdotes that don't address any of the points I made. And of course (yawn) I am "bashing" as usual.

You don't actually understand the concept of the separation of powers, do you? Neither do you understand the concept of the rule of law, as you have shown in previous posts.

Tell me, why do you think the use of RICO to prosecute insider trsders contradicts the principles of open and transparent justice? It doesn't matter how evidence is gathered: sooner or later evidence in a criminal must be presented in court, before an independent judge, and meet the test of proof beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury (there are exceptions to open court proceedings and trial by jury, but they are rare).

In China, the Communist Party appoints the judges, does it not? There is nothing more to say. The party is above and beyond the law, as it must be in the system you defend. This means there is no rule of law in China. The rule of law means the law is supreme, in and of itself. If the ruling authority makes a law and then breaks it, the law can be used against the authority itself - in a country with the rule of law. This can and does happen in Western countries, albeit rarely. It cannot happen in China.

In fact, the examples of the Communist Party ignoring and abusing its own laws and processes are so voluminous that it is wearisome even to continue this discussion. I could also try to convince you that the earth is round and the sun rises in the East, but if the Communist Party tells you otherwise I know you would fervently believe it.

I hope my quoting Confucius often would not be mis-construed as 'cultural imperialism' or worse, 'cultural genocide', but our Sage Eternal indeed had many acute observations, for democracy, Confucius said: 贫贱不移，富贵不淫(translation: when you are poor, it (democracy) won't make you rich; and when you are rich, it is just a fad).

Now, onto your third fallacy: judges are appointed by the party, so justice will not be served.

The point is that party is not a single person, not even a small group in lock-steps. Yes, judges appointed by the party will not declare that whole party is illegal, but they have handed down severe punishment to individual corrupted party officials. It's just like the situation in the West, judges are appointed (sometimes indirectly) by voters, so of course they won't declare voters are inanimate soul-less 'subjects', as un-elected monarchy would (you know what I'm talking about, do you?), but the courts have repeatedly handed down harsh sentences that resulted in US having the highest prison population, in both the aggregate and in per capita basis.

Your post to me shows that you have absolutely no idea about American legal system or how it works. And you have absolutely no knowledge about Chinese legal system.

I was appalled at your lack of knowledge in such area yet you saw fit to criticize unabashedly.

I regret that I actually spent my time debating you several times before. From now on, I will only tell you if you are right or wrong IMO in your posting when I see one, sans saying the why or that what of them.

I like you and admire you for your sharp commments and a strong sense of nationality and patriotism.some of you comments are even kept by me as leaning materials
you are a minded and knowledgeable person，i find myself till have a long way to step up my language ability and visions.
please enlighten me！
A sophomore majored in English from an inland unpromising university of china

And wow, you are “only” a “sophomore majored in English from an inland unpromising university of china” and yet you write this good already. When I was a college sophomore I didn’t even know much about the order of alphabet ABCs so to speak.

You said, “i find myself till have a long way to step up my language ability and visions.” Don’t we all?

IMO and as a Chinese, I discovered it’s of foremost importance trying to master the Chinese (Han Yu) language in speaking and in writing. Not just to make do, but to do it articulately, succinctly and beautifully. Chinese is one of such languages I know of (with limited ability of course) that can easily facilitate such attributes if you spend some time on it. Then the English which is important worldwide but not nearly as important as we are being told to believe, if we decide to live and work in China.

But since you are majoring in English (that's a tough major and I opted for the easier way out in engineering), it should be just as important to you. There, just like with Chinese language, we need to study harder to be better. IMO, trying to reciting from memory a few (or as much as one can manage) old classical pieces should help. That you are at an “inland unpromising university of china” is less important than your own study effort because IMO no one can better enlighten you than yourself. You impressed me as someone well on his way toward his pursuit of goal in life whatever that is.

Our government may not be the best or most admired yet, but as a whole they do work hard for the people with commitment to keep reforming for the better, and it’s the only one we have got. Our government’s brilliant overall achievement over the past three decades is world class and unprecedented in human history IMO. It deserves unmitigated support from every one of its citizens.

I submit that our faith in government should not be damped by recent series of events of corruption, abuses and/or power fights (if that indeed being the case) in high places that afforded plenty of ammunition for China bashing on these forums. It also offers good opportunity for faster reform now that it has happened. Having such unfortunate things out in the open is not bad but strengthening and cleansing element for China.

I wish you good luck with your study. To reflect a feeling of the state of our nation and to close off this post, allow me to quote an English lyric (partial) performed by a famous American pop singer the late Frank Sinatra, “My Way”:

“Regrets, I've had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.”

Amidst the hustle and bustle of the Book Fair the Chinese Quarter was a haven of quiet. There were practically no manned stands and, as a casual visitor and nonChinese speaker, no facility for just chatting to Chinese attendees (who rigorously looked away from any casual eye contact); then there were the signs in English, obviously not given the once-over by an English native eye!
Who needs the cultural training I wonder?

The Chinese government is also opening up a lot of "Confucius Institutes" on University campuses all across North America (also in Europe?), where Chinese Literature and Culture in general, has to conform to the ideological norms of the Chinese Communist Party.

"where Chinese Literature and Culture in general, has to conform to the ideological norms of the Chinese Communist Party."

Have you attended a Confucius Institute or looked at their curriculum? I have read many news reports (a few in the NY Times to boot) that have said that they neither teach about nor promote the CCP. These are strictly language institutions, where people are instructed in speaking Mandarin and reading and writing Chinese characters. Why else would people attend these otherwise

Then why did the propaganda chef and Politburo member of the CPC, Li Chungchan, come to Canada to open a new Confucius Institute at Carleton University in Canada? China is employing, what I call the strategy of deep penetration, to infiltrate and "Confucianise" Western institutions of higher education. In fact as was pointed out by Mayowa, they are doing it everywhere (Zhong Guo überall)
Remember, I prefer honest and humble Chinese, not hypocritical and hegemonial WMD's.

I think illegal printings of copy right violations, rumor mills and pornographic materials as well as radical propaganda calling for the overthrow of government in the name of extremists right or left should be and are banned for good reasons.

nkab, from about 5 down (and few hours ago) on this comment page: "I think illegal printings of copy right violations, rumor mills and pornographic materials as well as radical propaganda calling for the overthrow of government in the name of extremists right or left should be and are banned for good reasons."

So, are you one person trying to look like you have ideological friends and doing it badly, or a person who actually has like-minded friends who just suck at propaganda?
I really hope this isn't government-mandated public relations, as it would be scary if the largest nation in the world was this incompetent.

instead of listening to or soliciting views of thousands authors in china, TE chooses to entertain a handful exiles who had nothing but ill will toward china or chinese. it even got some 'taiwan independence' angler into the act reminiscent of the violation of a 2008 Olympic torch bearer in procession in europe by a 'taiwan independence' hooligan.

I genuinely enjoy watching supporters of Chinese state oppression contort and distort the truth to arrive at ludicrously implausible conclusions. I then feel somewhat glum when I realise that you genuinely believe what you say. I suppose that is the product of a country without a free media, judicial system or any form of un-authorized dissent.

the enjoinment is mine and I do believe you genuinely and uprightly feel the way you do.

but has it ever occurred to you that the country may not be what you claimed as “without a free media, judicial system or any form of un-authorized dissent”?

Don’t you feel being suffocating-ly inundated by the new onslaught of anti-china propaganda that’s now permeating every corner in the US media?

Use your common sense, even a highly ‘law and order’ US president (Nixon for example) can only fool 300 million americans some limited period of time, how can a lowly ‘lawless-freedom-less’ communist party fool 1,330 million Chinese all the time?

Current round of anti-china campaign is rather un-American and harmful to the US. don’t be fooled by such brainwashing, and I am not from china.

Why does the Chinese government block so many websites, even twitter, facebook and youtube? Why can't you find information on the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China? Why do Chinese history books stop their narratives at 1949? Of course it was harder to fool Americans, they have a relatively free media and at least some measure of debate, the Chinese don't. Have you ever watched the news in China? 50+ channels and only one news program. Every bulletin starts with the same story- a Chinese politican shaking hands with a foreign politician and talking about extending mutual understanding and cooperation.

I'm not in America and so not exposed to the anti-china 'propagandha' you speak of. Likewise, the economist isn't an American magazine. I don't need the media to tell me chinas excessive censorship is wrong, but I can read both sides of the story - something denied to those under the communist parties thumb. It has occurred to me that there are elements of freedom in chinas media and judiciary, but these are the exception rather than the rule. In the rest of the world, these are goals to strive for, in china they are seen as inconveniences to be stopped through censorship and "minders".

You mentioned Nixon. You know it was a free, unfettered press that held him to account don't you?

"... even a highly ‘law and order’ US president (Nixon for example) can only fool 300 million americans some limited period of time, how can a lowly ‘lawless-freedom-less’ communist party fool 1,330 million Chinese all the time?"

True, perhaps, but beside the point. The Chinese people don't choose their government; nor do they determine its policies. The U.S. is a democracy, if an imperfect one. In China power still flows from the barrel of a gun.

with due respect I think you people are suffering from the syndrome of mass conditioning into believing that there is press freedom in western media and that there is absolute democracy in western political system. They are not.

I am not saying what’s out there now in the west are bad, but it’s not what you have been led to believe.

not that it’s necessarily bad, but did you know that the US federal banking system is (partially) privately owned by big US banks? (did you learn that from any press?)

not that it’s necessarily bad, did you know that US spent $4 b in 2009 to get its president election campaign going? nobody says vote buying of course, but voting under the influence...may be?)....

you thought only the west has free democracy and universal suffrage. well, so has every untouchable and low caste in india, with 360 m of them living under poverty (WSJ, April 9, 2012). they may not have food on the table, but they sure have your brand of voting on the ballot.

I am not saying kettle calling pot black anything, but china has its own way of democracy and election voting, with its share of corruptions, abuses and scandals. the whole thing there is far from being perfect and is still in need of plenty of reforming, but guys, you don’t have a moral high ground there to judge, not one bit.

@kommonsenses, you simply do not understand. If the freedoms we have in the west (be they judicial, electoral or that of a free media) are all an elaborate construction, just an illusion, they are still more than the Chinese population are permitted.

The big difference that you seem unable to grasp is that we are able to question it. We can ask whether or not our elections are fair or our media are biased. Indeed, it is often the media themselves that ask these questions. We have a national debate that crosses into area's the Chinese population can only dream about.

The illusion is that we all have our problems, the differences come from culture or national priorities. This is a farce.

It sure does, 'ProudofIndian', here is what big brother WSJ reminding us all about starvation problems of india on WSJ april 9th, 2012, issue, fyi:

Quote: ‘But India is also a nation with about 360 million people living under the official poverty line – more than any other country – and starvation is all too real…..

Hunger doesn’t happen in isolation. Inevitably, our research exposed us to a range of economic and social ills in rural India and led us to incredible stories – tales of totally defunct public food and work programs, corruption, broken hand pumps for water, decrepit dirt roads, and caste exploitation’. Unquote.

sure beats me why no one inside india, big bro or not, is writing about it.

@kommonsenses: Lots of people do write about it including The Economist, but those authors are not censored nor are they 'accompanied' by government agents, oh sorry 'minders', as was the case with the London book afair, as the above article reports.
I would go crazy if I had a Big Brother agent sitting on my shoulders always peeping over my activities.

China publishes tens of thousands of titles of books a year by authors from across the country. What was a honorable culture exchange by way of recent London Book Fair should not be marred by a few disgruntled banned writers and laughably by some two bit clown from Taipei when Taiwan and Mainland are at it peacefully and nicely.

From what I gathered, China took London Book Fair seriously with rather elaborate showcasing pavilion and display sections of representative Chinese-English language publications in China, and with one of the top Central Politburo member attending the occasion. If nothing else, that’s China’s compliment to the Book Fair.

That all this Economist article managed was a brush off take on the “THE China stalls at the London Book Fair” reveals some unworthy mentality to begin with regarding the participation of the Book Fair.

I think illegal printings of copy right violations, rumor mills and pornographic materials as well as radical propaganda calling for the overthrow of government in the name of extremists right or left should be and are banned for good reasons.

This article should get used to and hold some due respect to people’s values, be they British or Chinese.

haha, you posted exactly the same comment under 2 different names you twat. after living in china for 10 years i am increasingly convinced that the one party system dooms china to the middle income trap and hard times ahead. its a shame cos there are so many smart and hard working people here. and i increasingly hear people bemoaning the lack of any real culture or values in modern chinese society. very sad.

You want to show me the other “same comment”? As I do not have 2 other different names.

You are entitled your opinion about China, but tell me why did you have lived in China for 10 long years, what for if you hated it so much? Get out there and stay the heck out where you can be happy with yourself and quit bitching about China so childishly.

I have lived in China all my life except my years of study abroad. I simply love my experience of living in China and wouldn’t trade it for any other place.